Darker morning vs darker nights...

Brace yourself: slightly more serious post coming up...

Around 13th August 2010 the daily express started a campaign for the UK clocks to go forward one hour, and (as I understand it) they would remain this way all year round. Thus aligning our time with most other European countries. In the article dated online on the 13th they explained that Prime Minister David Cameron would 'look at' wither or not this would in fact benefit Britain. Just yesterday he said these plans would only go ahead were it clear the public supported it.


So what would turning the clocks forward an hour do? It would mean longer nights as the sun would theoretically be setting an hour later, but it would also result in later sunrise. Living in London, the sunset would be at 22:22 on June 21st but in the winter solstice, December 21st, it would not fully be light until 9:04am. This isn't too late, sure it would be inconvenient but we could live with that, right? Well it would be more than inconvenient if you were living in Thurso, where the sun would not set until around half 11 at night in mid summer, and would not rise until after 10am in mid winter. This is long after people have gone to school and work. So practically lets think about the implications of children going to school in the pitch black. Not only would it cause more accidents and problems with children trying to get to school in the dark, but attention levels would be much lower. Here's my thinking, you know when you need to get up early one day and its still dark when you wake up and all you want to do is go back to sleep and until the sun comes out it still feels like 'night time'? If we feel like that and we're adults, multiply that by a million for kids, and lets be honest that attitude is not conclusive to positive learning!


Research suggests this move would decrease Britain's CO2 emissions by hundreds of thousands of tonnes each year. As daytime would be later, less people would be switching lights on at that time of night, for example. 


The Daily Express also believes it would improve the nations health by encouraging more leisure activities and could boost tourism by up to £4 billion a year. (I'm not too sure how this figure can be estimated or the reasons why, but I'm not the expert!)


The subject is currently in the form of a private members bill which on the 3rd December 2010 was debated at the second reading stage in the house of commons. It was voted for that the bill be sent to a Public Bill Committee whose job it will be to scrutinise clause by clause. 
The Bill itself sets out that if passed the government would be required to 'conduct a cross departmental analysis of potential costs and benefits'. If found to benefit the UK, the government would be required to initiate a trial clock change. 


In my house certainly there is a lot of confusion over when the clocks change and what time it should be etc etc but there is a certain delight in winter time (I think) when you get that extra hour in bed. It feels like a free hour, although you know fine well you lost an hours sleep however many months ago, but that hour extra is blissful! In my opinion, there really isn't that much wrong with the status quo, so why fix something if it isn't broken?